Every Little Thing in the World (7 page)

When I didn't find one, I automatically felt dejected and dissed. I thought that if I ever had a kid, I would punish her without being so emotional about it. The way my mother used anger to make points struck me as mean and even childish. It reminded me of the way Greg used to deal with me when I did something to hurt his feelings. He would freeze me out with these stony silences, attempting to make me feel worse and worse about what I'd done and who I was. My mother did exactly the same thing. If she thought that would make me have any kind of sympathy for her, it just had the opposite effect. I had hardly any sympathy and almost no respect.

I decided to concentrate on getting ready for my trip. I jammed a warm sleeping bag, two bathing suits, three T-shirts, four pairs of socks, two pairs of shorts, a sweat suit, a pair of sneakers, a raincoat, a fleece jacket, a hat, and mittens into my dad's external-frame pack. I would wear my jeans and hiking boots on the plane.

Kerry made a little packet of the toiletries I'd need. In the front pocket of the backpack, she zipped a bottle of Dr. Brauner's peppermint soap, a toothbrush and toothpaste, bug repellent (deet free at Dad's insistence, despite Campbell's recommendation), sunscreen, a Ziploc baggie full of Stri-Dex pads, and a box of o.b. tampons. That was the brand Mr. Campbell's list recommended, because they didn't have applicators. I watched Kerry tuck the box discreetly into its own separate compartment and thought how weirdly convenient it would be not to have to deal with my period on the trip.

The morning of my departure we woke at dawn. Dad drove me to the airport in Newark. We didn't talk much on the drive, which took more than an hour. He listened to
Morning Edition
on NPR, shaking or nodding his head vehemently at any mention of global warming or the Middle East. There was one segment about public schools replacing sex education with abstinence-only programs. I watched Dad's face for any sign of opinion, but he only hummed and looked out the window. Apparently this topic struck him as too frivolous to even listen to.

For the past few days, I had almost completely stopped
worrying about my pregnancy. Maybe it was because I still couldn't feel it in any kind of physical way. Every morning I stepped on the scale in Dad and Kerry's bathroom, and I hadn't gained an ounce. I'd even lost weight, despite Kerry's buttery cooking. I thought about what my father had said about me being distant from my own body. But I didn't feel distant from my body. I was a good athlete—not a great one, but competent enough to make the swim team and JV lacrosse. I tended to do best at individual sports, like diving or skiing. Although I had hated track the one term I'd joined the team, I liked to run. I felt aware of living inside my body, which had always done more or less what I wanted.

I had seen this kind of reasoning backfire in my friend Ashlyn, who was one of the best swimmers on our team. She always got chosen for national meets, and she was the one who always saved us when the rest of the team lagged behind. She also played field hockey and varsity lacrosse. Last year at an away meet for the swim team, Ashlyn and I shared a double bed at the New Haven Sheraton. We stayed up whispering long after the other girls had gone to sleep, and Ashlyn told me she'd been raped by this guy who lived in her old neighborhood. She told me that she should have seen it coming, because he used to follow her every day from the bus stop to her house.

“I never really worried about him,” Ashlyn told me, “because I always felt like I could take him. He wasn't that much taller than me, and I knew I was so much stronger than the average girl. I worked out every day. I felt sure I could run faster than
him if I ever needed to, and that I could fight him off. My body always did exactly what I told it. I thought I was invincible.”

She never told her parents that the guy was stalking her because she knew they would freak out. She thought she could handle it herself. The freedom she had, walking around on her own, still felt new; she didn't want her dad to start escorting her like she was a little kid. But one night when Ashlyn got home late from lacrosse practice, the guy jumped out from behind a tree. He dragged her into the bushes of a house that had been for sale for months. Ashlyn was amazed by how much stronger he was. He pinned her fast underneath him, his body unmoving when she tried to push him off, his hand over her mouth stifling her screams.

Ashlyn's family moved not long after this, and the boy never got in any kind of trouble. “I just never wanted to see his face again,” she told me.

I wondered if my confidence that this pregnancy would work itself out sprang from the same sort of delusion that had kept Ashlyn quiet. But even as I questioned that confidence, I couldn't veer away from it. I'd read in Kerry's pregnancy book that one in four women miscarried before the tenth week. Those odds did not seem so bad. Maybe I would be one of the lucky ones and lose the baby before I got back from Canada in August.

Because of my age, Dad was allowed to come with me to the gate. The first flight would take me to Toronto, where all the
campers would meet, and we would fly on a chartered plane to a little town called North Bay. After that, a chartered bus would take us to Camp Bell on the shores of Lake Keewaytinook. If it had been my mother, she would have gone over the printed sheet of instructions—meeting place, passport, tickets—a thousand times. But my dad just handed it all to me, trusting that ten years of private education had left me capable of reading.

We got to the crowded gate and sat down to wait for the plane. As soon as I was settled, two soft, cold hands covered up my eyes.

“Guess who?” said the familiar, silky voice.

I circled my fingers around slim wrists and pulled the hands away. When I whirled around, there stood Natalia. She had the same gap-toothed smile, but she looked different somehow. She was pale, and I could tell she'd piled extra concealer under her eyes.

“Oh my God,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

“I'm coming with you!” said Natalia. “Can you believe it?”

I really couldn't. For one thing, I'd never known Natalia to do anything remotely physical. After I'd quit the swim team I had to take gym class, and more days than not she would sit out with her period. Also, she had never been one to go without luxuries. I couldn't imagine her without her iPod, let alone minus a bed or running water.

I studied Natalia's face to make sure she was serious. She had on Lucky Brand jeans, a velvet T-shirt, and a cashmere shrug.
I wondered if she'd packed mascara and glitter blush in her own lightweight backpack—which I could see, sitting over by Mr. Miksa, who waved at me, was top-of-the-line Kelty.

“Dad,” I said, “this is my friend Natalia.”

Dad stood up and shook her hand. I could see he was seething. “Mr. Biggs,” Natalia said, placing a second hand on top of his before he could pull away. “I'm so happy to finally meet you.”

Dad pulled his hand away and nodded, mumbling some-thing that sounded unconvincingly like “Great.” Then he said, “How exactly did this happen?”

“I told my mom what Sydney was doing, and she called Ms. Sincero right up to ask about it. She thought it sounded like the perfect thing for me. I've been in a little trouble myself of late.”

My father forgot civility altogether and frowned. If I were the sort of person to draw cartoons, my picture of this meeting would have used quite a bit of black ink for the huge cloud of smoke coming from his ears. No doubt my mother had poured herself a hefty glass of Chardonnay and had a good laugh imagining my father's reaction to this development: a primary character from my usual life landing smack in the middle of his plan to separate me from all things familiar. At the same time, I recognized Natalia's appearance as a nod from my mom toward me, maybe even a small bit of olive branch.

I introduced Dad to Mr. Miksa, who pinched my cheek and then pumped his hand enthusiastically. “Ve just love your little Seed-ney,” he said. “The girls will have a grand time in the woods, yes?”

The gate attendant announced the first boarding call, which included minors traveling alone. Natalia threw her arms around her father's neck as Dad and I awkwardly kissed each other's cheeks. Next thing I knew we had displayed our passports and tickets and were walking arm in arm along the ramp to the airplane. It was completely surreal, and I couldn't decide whether I felt overjoyed or disappointed.

My seat was in the very first row of coach. Natalia had already worked out getting her seat assigned next to me, and we settled down together for the four-hour flight. She had gone to so much trouble in order to be with me that I felt guilty about my mixed feelings, which had nothing to do with her personally. I loved Natalia, and really there was no one in the world I'd rather see. It was just that I'd been so happy pretending not to be pregnant. It would have been so easy to keep doing exactly that with no one along on this trip who knew. But now Natalia would want to talk about it constantly. When really, what was there to talk about? Nothing could be done about anything till we got back from Canada.

I decided to level with her. “Look,” I said, once we settled into our seats. Natalia had just turned to look at me with the most dazed and wide-eyed expression, and I knew she was about to ask how I was feeling. I would never last through a monthlong canoe trip if every time we had to portage Natalia started fretting about my so-called condition.

“I just want you to know,” I said, “I feel perfectly fine. I don't
feel weird or nauseous or anything. I just feel totally normal. And one thing I really want is for nobody else on this trip to know. I don't care how friendly we get with anyone, this has to be a total secret. Okay?”

“Of course,” Natalia said. “But are you sure you feel all right?”

Truthfully, as the plane began to taxi down the runway and lift off into the sky, I felt a sinking, lurching sensation in my gut. But I had never been a good flier. I looked at the pocket in the seat in front of me and noted the exact location of the white tabs of my airsickness bag, sticking up from behind the airline magazines.

“I feel fine,” I said.

She rubbed her hands nervously over her thighs. I looked at the fake-silver Irish wedding band Steve had given her, shining on her left ring finger.

“So this is going to be great, right?” she said. “Paddling from one island to the next. Camping out. It'll be like
Survivor
, except no one gets voted off.”

She still didn't seem like herself. The words might have been enthusiastic, but her voice sounded strained. Maybe she was upset about the long separation from Steve, or else maybe she was scared of a month in the wilderness.

“Have you ever even been camping before?” I asked, though I knew perfectly well she hadn't.

“Don't you remember Kendra Hirsch's birthday?”

That had been in fourth grade. Five of us pitched a big tent for a slumber party in Kendra's backyard. Her mother had
brought us hot chocolate and mint Milanos on a tray, and her father had sat awake all night in a lawn chair, standing guard with an industrial flashlight to keep kidnappers and pedophiles away.

“This will be a little more hard-core,” I said.

“That's all right,” said Natalia, in that same slightly husky voice. “I'm ready.” She stretched out her arms and cracked her knuckles, something I'd never seen her do before. Her words spilled out in a weird staccato, like she couldn't stop herself. “This was a really ingenious plan of your father's,” she said. “As soon as I told my parents, I could see all sorts of lightbulbs going off above their heads. There's no way Steve could track me down on a Canadian lake, so they'd finally know for certain that we were apart. I'm thinking, when I get back, I'll tell them I met some nice Jewish boy. They'll think I'm IMing him and talking to him on the phone, and they'll never know the difference.”

“But what about this summer?” I said. “Isn't it your last chance to be with Steve before Switzerland?”

“Be with Steve? I haven't laid eyes on Steve since that night we tried to tell Tommy. They've got me under house arrest. No computer, no cell phone. I had to send him a letter to tell him about this trip, and then I got in trouble for sneaking out to the mailbox. But I'm thinking, maybe having me away this month will make them miss me. And if they think there's no more Steve, then why bother sending me all the way to Switzerland?”

“But there's still a Steve, right? You two haven't broken up.”

“There's no way to contact him,” Natalia said, “so I couldn't break up with him if I wanted to. Which I don't. We're still totally in love.” She took a deep breath, and sitting so close, I could see that concealer masked tiny purple half moons beneath her eyes.

“But I haven't even told you the biggest thing,” Natalia said. “I have news. Huge news. Monumental.”

The seat belt sign went off with a little electric ding. Natalia unbuckled and said, “Just a second; I'm going to the bathroom. Get me a Coke if the drinks come by.”

I watched her sashay unsteadily around the annoyed flight attendant. As she passed the little kitchen, she reached into the unattended drink cart and pulled out two of those miniature liquor bottles. I couldn't imagine where she would hide them—her jeans were painted on—but she disappeared so quickly into the lavatory, nobody but me could have noticed.

“We'll each have a Coke,” I told the flight attendant when she came by with the cart. Natalia still hadn't returned. When she did climb in next to me, it took her a few minutes to dig the bottles out of her pocket.

“Unless,” she said, her hand hovering over my Coke, “you don't think you should be drinking.”

“Don't be stupid,” I said, my tone unusually harsh. Her expression darkened for a second, from sadness to annoyance. I watched the emotional progression of her face, remembering my state and forgiving me. Then she poured the rum into my
Coke and disposed of the bottle—stashing it in the flap pocket of the seat in front of her in one fluid, secretive motion.